Porn, dog poo and social media snaps: the ‘taskers’ scraping the internet for Meta-owned AI firm
TL;DR
Scale AI gig workers describe desperation of using people’s personal profiles and copyrighted work to train AI Tens of thousands of people have been paid by a company part-owned by Meta to train AI by combing Instagram accounts, harvesting copyrighted work and transcribing pornographic soundtracks, the Guardian can reveal. Scale AI, 49%-controlled by Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire, has recruited experts across fields such as medicine, physics and economics – putatively to refine top-level artificial intelligence systems through a platform called Outlier. “Become the expert that AI learns from,” it says on its site, advertising flexible work for people with strong credentials. Continue reading...
Nauti's Take
The piece exposes a structural tension: AI companies depend on massive human labor to function, yet rarely communicate that transparently. On the positive side, gig data work provides flexible income for many people in constrained job markets.
The real concern is the use of private data — real people's Instagram profiles and copyrighted work — without their knowledge or meaningful consent.
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